This current artistic review was written by the Peruvian art critic Carlos Solari under the pseudonym “Don Quixote”, who initially was commenting on the recent works by the Peruvian artist Juan Leppiani, who resided in Italy but was visiting his country. Indigenous art was booming in Peru between the decades of the twenties and forties. It was a broad faction of and within Peruvian society. It was at times a redefinition of national identity based on its indigenous components. While at times it was compelled to the reevaluation of the “indigenous” people and their gloriously considered Inca descent. Representing them in defense of their “Hispanic” and “native” integration and their “mestizo” identity. The ideologist and undisputed leader at the core of the indigenous artistic movement and indigenous Visual Arts was José Sabogal (1888–1956). Sabogal would spend most of his formative years traveling and found that the major causes influencing many regional tendencies, like in Spain, among other countries, was the deep sense of their cultural “roots” as found in the art by Ignacio Zuloaga [1870–1945] and the works by Jorge Bermúdez [1883–1926] of Argentina, just to mention another artist, and similarly like in Peru, where he returned almost at the end of 1918. Sabogal settled in Cusco where he would produce about forty oil paintings portraying and describing the characters and views of Cusco. These would later be exhibited in Lima in 1919. It is considered that the inception of the indigenous artistic movement in Peru formally began with this exhibition. His second solo exhibition took place in Lima in the halls of the Casino Español in 1921 solidifying his prestige. In 1920, Sabogal joined the professorial staff of the new ENBA until becoming its director from 1932 to 1943. While there, he formed a group adhering to the indigenous artistic movement with artists such as Julia Codesido, Alicia Bustamante (1905–68), Teresa Carvallo (1895–1988), Enrique Camino Brent (1909–60) and Camilo Blas (1903–85). Although Vinatea Reinoso was not among the students who trained directly under Sabogal, his work is also categorized as belonging to the indigenous art movement. From small living in Arequipa, the artist stood out for his enthusiasm and love of drawing and at the age of thirteen created his first book on cartoons. In 1917, he did his first individual presentation of his cartoons in the photographic studio of Vargas Hermanos, in his hometown. In January 1918, Vinatea arrived in Lima where he would illustrate his cartoons in several publications in Lima. In October of that year he would present his first exhibition at the Librería Rosay. Two years later he joined the staff of the magazine Mundial, created that same year, as its artistic director. Towards 1919, he joined the newly founded ENBA, under the academic direction of Daniel Hernández, the Spanish sculptor Manuel Piqueras Cotolí and of the renowned Sabogal himself. In 1920, he exhibited his works at the Estudio de Fotografía Rembrandt consisting of cartoons, landscapes and notes related to indigenous themes, echoing the school’s prevailing nationalism centric in its studies. Three years later, he made his first research excursion to the southern sierras of Peru where the landscapes in his work are alternated with traditional motifs from the Peruvian capital. In August 1926, he would inaugurate his first solo exhibition at the ENBA which would consecrate him in the artistic circles. Unlike the works by Sabogal and his group, his work was characterized by its technical refinement, derivative from the teachings of Hernández, and provided great acceptance. Hernandez was oblivious to Sabogal’s deliberate crudeness in his work. Despite being associated with different indigenous groups from Lima and other cities in southern Peru, Vinatea Reinoso never linked himself to any collective project. At the beginning of 1928 he traveled to Puno and Arequipa, where he made a series of notes in relation to a prospective exhibition in Buenos Aires, which was not realized due to his early death in 1931. Please refer specifically to the studies on Vinatea Reinoso. 1930-1931 (Lima: Telefónica del Perú, 1997) by Luis Eduardo Wuffarden and Natalia Majluf.
